1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer program product, system, and method for maintaining multiple copy versions of component values in a system.
2. Description of the Related Art
State information for a computing environment may be stored in a computer database, consisting of multiple tables, that track the current state of some environment (E), as well as the historical changes of E at different points-in-time. As E changes over time, historical information is saved in the database tables, such that E1, E2, E3, etc. represent the historical state of E at some point in time T1, T2, T3, etc. in the past. Each such En is termed a “snapshot” of E.
The entire environment E may be saved in multiple tables S1, S2, S3, etc. where each table contains multiple rows of information. Each row represents the state of a particular component of E at a particular point in time. For instance, Sxyz can denote the row in table Sx for component Cy at time Tz. Therefore, a snapshot of the environment En at a time Tn can be expressed by the set of rows S11n, S12n, S13n . . . S21n, S22n, S23n, . . . Sm1n, Sm2n, Sm3n . . . where m is the total number of tables in the database. To record a new historical snapshot for E at time t+1, a new set of rows S11n+1, S12n+1, S13n+1, . . . S21n+1, S22n+1, S23n+1, . . . Sm1n+1, Sm2n+1, Sm3n+1 . . . may be written to the database.
To avoid the database from growing too large, the administrator may limit the overall time range T1 . . . Tn of snapshot copies represented in the database.
There is a need in the art for improved techniques for storing multiple snapshot copies of a system environment.